For the second time in a week, a key voice from the managed services industry said his biggest challenge involves finding and recruiting talent, particularly sales talent. The big question: Is there a shortage of sales talent within the MSP ecosystem? Or are we looking in the wrong places for the talent?
The latest call for help comes from Chuck Lennon, president of TeamLogic IT, a fast-growing franchise operator for VARs and MSPs. During the Channel Happy Hour podcast yesterday, Lennon mentioned that he’s gearing up for growth this month. His top priority is helping franchisees to find sales talent for their growing businesses.
Meanwhile, in a recent blog entry, Nimsoft CEO Gary Read mentioned that his biggest challenge — surprise, surprise — is finding and recruiting the right talent. Moreover, MSP industry players like CharTec, Do IT Smarter and Print Choices each have listed sales opportunities in the MSPmentor Career Center.
And our best-read guest blog from the past few weeks focused purely on sales and the Rainmaker Business Model for MSPs.
I realize the examples above are purely anecdotal. But when you listen to the managed services community as a whole, it seems like the loudest voices are talking about (A) sales development or (B) the need to find, recruit, train and retain sales talent.
I’ve previously told MSPs to target under-performing industries — such as former real estate professionals — for potential sales talent. But a few readers said I was off my rocker.
I wonder: Where, ultimately, can MSPs find the best sales talent?
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Tags: Channel Happy Hour | CharTec | Chuck Lennon | Do IT Smarter | MSPmentor Career Center | NimSoft | Print Choice | Rainmaker Business Model | TeamLogic IT
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Take a look at our 
I think we are talking about two things here.
The biggest problem is that MSP / Solution Providers struggle mightily with the sales side of the business. Predominantly MSPs are started by engineers, who can figure out how to manage other engineers. But when it comes to managing their first or multiple sales people, its a totally foreign concept. Its not surprising to see that most MSPs are 15 or less people. About as big as you can get without having to go out and hire and retain a sales person (or more than one).
I’m not convinced there is a shortage of good sales people. I would agree that real estate / financial advisors / construction sales people is a bad place to start though. B2B experience is one of the biggest factors we look for, and the first of those two have no experience there.
Commit to growing your business. Learn how to hire / retain sales people (There are a lot of good consultants out there to help you get this RIGHT…Kendra Lee and Taylor Business Group to name two). Know that hiring and managing sales people is extremely different than engineers.
Nick Bock
Five Nines Technology Group
NickB: Your point about MSPs maxing out at 15 people before hiring additional sales talent is well-taken. I think you’ve echoed the challenge with the Rainmaker model I had linked to above.
-jp
Our biggest challenge the past six months has been to find great salespeople (albeit we are in a slightly different area). Guess I better post up to the job board ya’ have offered on this site (note to self)
harrybbb
Yes, great sales people are hard to find, but they’re out there. Thats only half the battle. You then need to make them successful, that’s the responsibility of the MSP and the new great sales rep. There are very tried and true best practices out there, from the experiences of some very successful tech/MSP sales managers, that can be learned. Hiring, on-boarding and managing to success can happen and when it does it absolutely has a significant impact on the business.
best,
I agree with Todd, finding good sales people is very hard, but making them successful and keeping them successful requires more than relying on the fact that they are good to begin with. Understanding the best skill set or capabilities for the particular value propositions and target customer segments is key to being able to identify the best candidates and subsequently identifying areas for training and coaching to top performance.
The third element to look at is how to tool the sales people up so that they can bring their talent to bear on the sales process rather than having to invent content, evidence, best practices etc.
It all takes work and understanding but worth it when you consider that without consistent sales performance, the company withers and dies.
Great topic Joe. Two of the most successful MSP sales people I’ve meet to date came from the B2B Yellow book sales world. Not only did they completely understand small business challenges, but they also came with a HUGE book of (local) business.
Secondly, Nick made a great point about engineer’s knowing how to hire other engineers. Anyone whose ever worked in technology completely understands the personality differences between technical folks and sales folks. I’ve sat in quite a few lunch rooms over the years have to say there’s two truly distinct personality types.
So with that in mind, when you’re planning on hiring a sales resource my advice would be to plan everything out long before the first interview. Make sure you have a solid understanding of how you’re going to deal with the following:
- Compensation
- lead generation/target prospects
- marketing budgets
- Existing ‘conversion based’ clients (Break-fix/block)
- Sales targets/quota (Critically important! You really need to set the correct expectation from the start)
- How you’re going to train them on your managed service offerings (Another extremely important factor that will go a long way with ensuring their initial
Plan to conduct weekly (or at the very least monthly) sales review meetings. Don’t wait until the third month to ask ‘Where’s are the sales?’. Be proactive and provide as much support as you can. Chances are, the sales resource now working for you has never sold ‘peace of mind’ or ‘increased staff productivity’ before.
When talking to MSP’s about this subject, I always ask the same question…. ‘If you were to hire me as your sales guy tomorrow…. what resources would be available to me when I showed up for work Monday morning?’.
Mike Byrne
Director of MSP, Quest Software
Mike: The final question on your list is a very revealing one. I wonder how many MSPs have a solid “resources” answer to that sales person question?
-jp
Definitely hard to get a handle on whether there is a shortage or not across the industry. In the 100 plus companies I work with every year a large majority of them haven’t even looked for sales people as hiring and developing a sales force isn’t honestly on their radar. I think for a majority of MSP’s the shortage truly is in owners realizing they NEED a sales force AND doing something about it. We evangelize this NEED at every opportunity. So if there truly is a shortage, do yourself a favor and start looking now; from my experience, your competition doesn’t have sales people either!
Josh: I like your last sentence, a lot.
Sales folks have that old saying “Always Be Closing.” As some readers may recall me blogging, MSPs should tweak that to include “Always Be Interviewing.” Even if you don’t have a position open now, learn about the key talent — one interview per week — to assist your longer-term HR strategy.
-jp